Tag Archives: Free

For Sale by Proprietor or “FOBS” is a term used in the true estate industry to describe householders who select to promote their homes privately; meaning without contracting an actual property agent to handle the transaction. Most folks who select this path do so as a result of they acknowledge the numerous financial savings that can be realized by cutting out the agent and their hefty fees. Avoiding the everyday agent’s fee of 6% can equate to 1000’s, even tens of 1000’s of dollars in potential savings. This substantial monetary benefit ought to be enough to encourage nearly anybody to take a critical have a look at the FOBS option.

Though the FOBS option provides loads of financial incentive, many homeowners ultimately fail of their attempt to sell their very own home. Ultimately they grow to be discouraged and end up looking for the assistance of an actual estate agent. Unfortunately, they find yourself paying the large fee charges they were attempting to avoid within the first place. One of many largest reasons individuals fail at promoting their house themselves is because they weren’t able to attract enough potential buyers. If you want to promote your property, it’s essential to appeal to buyers. The more interested consumers you might have, the higher your likelihood is of promoting your home. So, if you want to attract numerous potential buyers, you want to have a solid advertising and marketing strategy in place.

Described beneath are some useful suggestions that can assist you to create and execute an efficient advertising and marketing campaign for yourself. The higher you are at executing a stable advertising plan, the extra potential patrons you will attract. Extra patrons means a greater probability of discovering the correct purchaser who is prepared and capable of pay the worth you are asking. Effective advertising takes creativity, time and effort. The good news is that the advertising methods described listed here are either utterly free or dust low cost!

For starters, you’ll want to reap the benefits of the free net resources out there to you that will let you advertise your property for sale. Utilize all the social media available to you as instruments to help promote your property for sale. Let your mates on Face book and Twitter know that you are selling your house. Ask them to spread the phrase to their friends. When you’ve got a we blog, use it to let individuals know that you’re selling your home. Ship an email with photographs and particulars of your property to your total e mail list. Assume outside the field and ask for referrals from friends and family! You by no means know who has a buddy or a co-employee or a cousin who’s in the market for a house similar to yours. Bear in mind it’s essential to get the word out to as many people as you can. Don’t underestimate the power of referrals. Use free digital media to recruit as many referral sources as possible.

Subsequent, search for different free and/or cheap on-line sources that help you list your home for sale. Sites comparable to Craig list and a few regionally operated hometown news and newspaper websites provide free or low cost actual property listings. Mention all the essential options and selling factors in your description. Do not forget that individuals like to see a number of pictures. A gallery of good pictures that showcase your homes sturdy selling factors will help pique the curiosity of potential buyers. Benefit from free online itemizing services once you can.

Do not forget in regards to the significance of print advertising. Be certain to run small newspaper adverts, particularly if you end up planning an open house. Plenty of potential residence patrons take a look at the Sunday paper to plan their “open house runs” for the day. There are also plenty of publications similar to church bulletins and organization newsletters out there in most areas that you must contemplate advertising with. Bulletin boards at the grocery stores are an amazing place to tack up your brochures and it will not price you anything other than the price of the paper and ink. Incorporate footage into your print adverts and brochures whenever possible. A picture is price a thousand words! At all times bear in mind to incorporate web sites and online information in your print ads so individuals have complete entry to your postings and pictures.

One yard sign would not minimize it. Proper signage placement is necessary particularly for those who home is on a facet street or off the primary road. You should post your signs at strategic places in order that they lead patrons directly to your home. Once more, that is particularly important when you are hosting an open house. Contemplate putting balloons on your signs as an added consideration getter.

A last tip could be to send out a letter by common mail to your whole friends and family and let them know that your home is on the market and you would respect if they might submit a brochure up on their bulletin board at work. Embody multiple copies of your brochure in your mailers. Most households have multiple employee who can post your listing, so it’s a good idea to ship them further copies. You’ll want to embody any website addresses or posting details to allow them to see more about your house online.

Learn more about Fast House Sale . Stop by Rcook’s site where you can find out all about Fast House Sale and what it can do for you.

Instead of spending big bucks to advertise in print publications and participate in other costly offline marketing venues, many businesses of all sizes are turning to free to low cost internet methods and strategies to invest their time, effort and branding for a greater outreach. Because for much less than the price of one print classified ad, a company can generate many more leads, targeted leads, with methods that are free to very low cost on the Internet, while responses from print campaigns, if any, are often not worth the return on investment (ROI) in comparison.

Some of the more popular free to low cost internet marketing methods out there today follow.

1) Free Press Release and Article Directories – Well written articles and press releases help draw targeted Internet traffic to websites. Simply insert a link in the body of the press release that invites readers to visit a website for a free report or other offer in the last paragraph, and add a similar call to action in the resource box or byline or an article. Then submit the press releases and articles to free online article directories and press release sites. Find them by entering keywords like, “free article directory,” in Google or other top search engine.

2) Hire Ghostwriters – Hiring someone to write content for your blog, website, article and press release submissions work is easy to day and inexpensive when you outsource your work to ghostwriters. Find experienced, qualified writers on freelance bid sites like Elance.com and on forums in your niche and in the Internet marketing arena, like at WarriorForum.com.

3) Establish a Presence at Free Social Networking, Bookmarking and Other Sites – There are many places online where you can register for a free account, set up a web presence there, often with the ability to upload digital media to share with others, post on a blog and more, while also networking with fellow members and / or visitors to the site, as they make comments on your content, share their info and more. Some of these sites are:

Squidoo Hubpages Blogger WordPress MySpace Twitter

Find many more by searching Onlywire.com for starters. And sign up there to bookmark all your content for sharing with multiple sites and to learn more.

A couple points to keep in mind with these sites are: follow the rules at each, don’t spam and don’t go over board there. For example, Hubpages only allows two links to your sites, at the time of this writing. Don’t add three, trying to fake them out with an affiliate link. And don’t spam comments all over on other Hubs just to get links. This type negative activity can get you banned, your account closed.

4) Free Classified Online Ads – Search for “free classified ads” in Google and many sites show up. Some of the more popular places to submit your ads are:

For help writing your ads and even submitting them and keeping them up to date on each site, consider hiring help, outsourcing with a ghostwriter experienced with sales copy, and a virtual assistant who can open accounts at each place, submit your ads and follow up as they expire to renew them, revise them, etc.

Using free website traffic tactics can be addictive. Once you start you might never want to pay for advertising again. Try these tips and see for yourself.

Tip #1: Organic Search Engine Rankings. There are only three search engines you need to worry about and those are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Conquering top search engine rankings in the big three starts with good keyword research. When you know what search terms you want to target, it’s then a matter of tailoring your site to match what the search engines are looking for.

With Google you need lots of original content (that is, large websites) and natural-looking incoming links. With Yahoo its pretty much the same except that you can use reprinted articles, otherwise known as duplicate content, in building your subpages. With MSN you can attain top spots with small mini-sites that simply use the search terms in the domain.

You need incoming links, known as backlinks, to move up in the rankings. Some popular ways to get these include using social bookmarking sites, posting comments and trackbacks on blogs (and other sites) that don’t use “no follow” meta tags, submitting articles to article directories, posting your URL on directory sites, and exchanging links with other sites.

Tip #2: Social Networks such as Myspace. This usually involves making multiple profiles and getting very social on the social network with other users. Automation software is often utilized to make mundane tasks such as sending friend requests, comments, and messages to other users much faster. Myspace allows their database to be sorted by a nice range of demographics, which is very helpful if you need a target list of prospects to promote your product or service to. You can also access members of groups who all have a shared interest in a certain subject.

Tip #3: Free Classified Ad Sites. This is getting to be a very effective free traffic method, but you do need to go about it with some tact and creativity. Craig’s List is the king of free online classifieds, and a properly tailored campaign can harvest hundreds of targeted prospects per day. Software is very handy for managing larger campaigns.

Tip #4: Video Hosting Sites. Anyone can harvest sales leads from video hosting sites these days. You can make a video using a digital camera or free screen recording software on your computer, or a combination of both. This is where the creative types will soar above the crowd.

You Tube is the undisputed king of online video hosting, and a smart marketer can reap thousands of views for his or her video per day from inside You Tube itself. All you need to do is drive people to your page, which can be done by commenting on other videos or other peoples pages, and sending friend requests. Software makes this process much more efficient.

Tip #5: Question and Answer Sites. These are becoming incredibly popular, with Yahoo Answers being the clear leader for the moment. Anyone can ask questions, anyone can answer questions, and as long as you don’t come across as a blatant spammer, dropping your links into both questions and answers is pretty easy. It’s certainly worth your time to market any niche through Yahoo Answers.

Tip #6: Forums. Message board forums exist on the internet for just about every topic imaginable. An advanced Google search using “message board forum” and your topic of interest will probably turn up several places where people discuss your subject. Join these forums, become active and helpful to others, then do subtle marketing through your signature (or even your user name).

Tip #7 Give-aways on auction sites. Auction sites such as ebay are a great opportunity to find customers for your niche. Write a 10-page report that has a few good tips and a great sales pitch for your product, and then give it away for free (or charge something like $ 1 for it). Hype it up with some good sales jargon so it moves well. Capture the emails of those downloading the book and add them to an autoresponder service so you can keep mailing them offers.

These tips are only the beginning of free traffic opportunities on the web. Plenty of marketers make a nice income without spending a dime on advertising. Will you become one of them?

This article is meant to help you discover venues for reaping free traffic and is brought to you by http://www.trafficbandits.com, a membership site that focuses on free traffic harvesting tactics.

When developing content for several types of documents; graphic designers and webmasters often search for free images in order to enhance the appearance of the communication. If intellectual property laws are observed when trying to find free images, then this process can be very productive.

Images can enhance any project

When an artist or writer creates a work, often they will select or gather images that pertain to the specific idea in which they are writing.

Engaging images in the content appeal to the visual perception of the reader, if there were no images at all then even the best written publication my be overlooked. Regardless of the saying “you cannot judge a book buy it’s cover” it can certainly help grab the attention of browsers and potentially turn them into a sale.

Images not only help to attract people to engaging content, but if images are named according to the surrounding content with the appropriate ‘alt’ attribute tags, this will entice search engines to index the content in a more relevant manner and possibly even higher in the results. There are also additional search related benefits for images which appear in the image search results for specific key terms.

Locating Free Images

A great way to get high quality and high resolution images for a website or other publication is to use a digital camera to take pictures. However, when the photographs are converted into images or logos it is critical that trademarks and symbols are not apparent in the picture, otherwise intellectual property rights may be of concern.

Wikimedia commons is a popular website for royalty free content. This search wiki has thousands if not millions of contributors which upload their content and share it according to specific creative commons licensing. Content is easily found through various search criteria including source, license, author , location, type, and content topic.

Flickr is another source to find images for free, which is literally inexhaustible. Millions of people share images on this social network every day and many are often personal images which have no commercial royalty implications. Flickr has recently implemented a licensing option for images. The license is clearly stated by creative commons in order to avoid any confusion. If there is a question regarding the license of an image, a messaging tool allows users to send messages; and most photographers will allow their images to be used at no cost if credit is given for their work.

Although it may be a common practice by some to browse Google images for free pictures, this is not a recommended method. The search engine robot indexes these images without regard to licensing or royalties, and the search display relies upon the website owner to protect or allow the images to be indexed. Images which appear in the search results are subject to copyright, which is stated in the search query.

Transferring free images to a website

No one single method can be applied for all types of communications. Publishing images to websites and blogs can require completely different procedures than publishing an image in a magazine or advertising brochure. If these processes are considered prior to beginning a project then time, space and cost can be controlled to a minimum.

Downloading free images and creating hotlinks to free images is demonstrated in a video titled “images for free” which provides a brief overview of this process. As these general methods are learned webmasters can then build upon these skills to further enhance and refine the process.

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However, some website administrators consider hotlinking to be bandwidth theft, especially if their website cost is determined by the amount of bandwidth used each month. Copying images to a social blog or bulletin board post is very simple for websites that have implemented a hotlink code method. These websites will often display a share or post feature. HTML and/or BBcode are two of the typical options that allow for easy hotlinking of freely shared images.

Many websites offer the ability to automatically generate the code to hotlink images into posts and websites. This can help any web design novice begin to understanding how the code must be formatted to hotlink an image. Once a general understanding is learned then alternative file paths can be substituted for other websites that do not offer this automated function. Again, make certain that hotlinked images are permitted. The hotlink code must be placed in the appropriate place with the appropriate format. For instance HTML code would typically be placed in an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) compatible form, CMS (Content Management System) or a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Bulletin Board code (BBCode) can be placed in its respective locations as well. PHP Bulletin Boards are very popular throughout the internet and this Hotlink code is specifically for these types of Bulletin systems. If there is doubt as to whether the code will actually work or not, a test can be performed by pasting the code into a form and then utilize the preview button.

Copy images to a computer

Static documents such as brochures, greeting cards, magazines and other physically printed medium are designed using images that are manipulated and edited on a local PC. Although this process is more involved it does allow for great customization and changes to be made to a free image that has been downloaded from the internet. Again, creative commons intellectual property rights licensing must be observed. Some license types allow for derivative works to be created as long as the original author is credited but then again some do not allow their work to be changed.

One of the first steps to transferring free images to a PC is to consider how the images will be stored. Images take a lot of space especially if they are high resolution. An external secondary hard drive may be considered in lieu of utilizing the existing space on a local PC. Wherever the images may be stored, the storage structure and file – folder system should be planned. This will help with image retrieval and allow for efficient editing and manipulation. If image storage can be planned first of all, then slow image organization software will not need to be used to clean things up later.

The process for copying an image to a local PC is much different that creating a hotlink. Most websites permit the right click function on a mouse which produces a “Save As” or “Save Target As” option. If the website does not allow a right click of the mouse it is likely that the administrators do not want visitors or members copying the images and have implemented code to prevent image theft. If this is the case it is very important that a webmaster verifies permission prior to continuing with other methods to obtain the images. A true webmaster will follow best practices and respect the rights of artists and content creators. A bad reputation can be given to businesses and individuals who are issued DMCA take down notices because of stolen images and content that does not follow intellectual property laws.

Legally copying free images

Intellectual property laws have recently become a more prevalent issue since the inception of the internet. Hence the US government has heightened copyright laws and penalties for breach of copyright. If a webmaster were to receive a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take down notice from an internet service provider or other legitimate authority it is in the best interest of the webmaster to immediately comply with the request. This is especially true if the webmaster knows that they have copied the image from another website.

Creative commons licensing has made it easy for artists and publishers to share their creative works with the world. This licensing model is not only applicable to images, but to written works and video media as well. It highly recommended that all web content creators become familiar with the creative commons licensing structure prior to seeking to obtain free images.

With a little time and research, artists, webmasters, developers and graphics designers can find many sources of images for free on the internet. All image content needs can be fulfilled while complying with copyright laws, this will help to build relationships with content providers for months and years to come.

Images and pictures have been used by nearly every type of publication. Websites, magazines, and advertisements are just a few of the kinds of content medium. Browsing the internet while searching for free images can be a lot of fun and rewarding when intellectual property law is respected.

Why images should be used

Content creators and graphic artists realize the value of acquiring a cache of free images that can be utilized for a specific topic or idea in their production.

Gaining the attention of a potential browser is one of the most critical points to selling an idea or production. The visual senses of all people are attracted by beautiful pictures, especially when they pertain to something of interest. If a writer or content publisher can grab the attention of someone passing by they are much more likely to turn them into a customer.

Images not only help to attract people to engaging content, but if images are named according to the surrounding content with the appropriate ‘alt’ attribute tags, this will entice search engines to index the content in a more relevant manner and possibly even higher in the results. There are also additional search related benefits for images which appear in the image search results for specific key terms.

Best places to find Free Images

A great way to get high quality and high resolution images for a website or other publication is to use a digital camera to take pictures. However, when the photographs are converted into images or logos it is critical that trademarks and symbols are not apparent in the picture, otherwise intellectual property rights may be of concern.

Wikimedia commons is a popular website for royalty free content. This search wiki has thousands if not millions of contributors which upload their content and share it according to specific creative commons licensing. Content is easily found through various search criteria including source, license, author , location, type, and content topic.

A very popular photographer social network, which publishes millions of new images every day, is Flickr. This website is hosted by the Yahoo network and is likely to be the most popular image sharing portal in the world. Since many members on this website are novice photographers, often the contributors to this website will allow their images to be published elsewhere free of charge. The site utilizes a creative commons licensing structure that allows contributors to specify the licensing type they wish applied to their images. An internal private messaging system allows for internal messages to be sent to other members in the event that there may be a question regarding an image. This is a great tool for building relationships and a content sharing network. Many will find that if an image creative commons license does not specify that an image can be shared freely, then they can simply ask for permission and most photographers will welcome their work to be published elsewhere if they are given credit.

The Image search feature on Google images produces millions of results for nearly any image query. However, it is critical that consideration is given to the license of the images as many are copyrighted rather than free. The image search does allow for a query to be made for free images only, It is recommended when searching with this tool that the option is used to search only for free or creative commons license types. The Creative commons license type must be observed for free images because there may be additional terms described by the license which will be discussed later in the article.

Transferring free images to a website

Once a source has been selected for free images, the next step is to determine how the images can be transferred to a publication. The method of transfer depends upon how and where the images will be used. The same method for posting an image to a social blog may not apply to saving an image for printing in a magazine or postcard.

Some of these basic processes are demonstrated briefly in the video titled “images for free”. Hotlinks, downloads and other methods should be considered. Once the various methods are learned then they will become second nature and the process is much more efficient.

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Image hotlinks allow an image to be published into a website, blog or bulletin board post but hosted and stored elsewhere. This can reduce website load times significantly which is something that search engines have begun to factor into rankings. However, although an image hotlink can be generated from just about any website it is not always allowed per the website policy. When an image is hotlinked Copyright infringement and intellectual property laws can come into play. It is important for webmasters to obtain permission prior to generating a hotlink. This is especially true if the website does not provide an automated method to generate the code for a hotlinked image. Some webmasters consider image hotlinks to be bandwidth theft and are not tolerant of image theft. This is because they pay for their website hosting by the bandwidth used each month.

Displaying a free hotlinked image on a blog, website or bulletin board could not be easier. When a hotlinked image is utilized this will offload the bandwidth from the website being displayed. To use an image as a hotlink it is best to find a site that generates this code already, then the code can be used as a template to utilize this for other free images from sites that do not generate the code. Typically code will be generated for Bulletin Board (BBCode) or pure Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). This code can then simply be copied from the site and pasted directly into a form for a bulletin board post or into a websites html page by content management system (CMS) tool etc.

Copy images to a computer

Certain creative commons licenses allow for derivative works. This means that the image can be changed and manipulated to suit a webmasters needs or content. However, attribution must be given to the original author of the work that was copied freely. Most artists and photographers will allow their images to be used if proper credit is given for their work.

Organization planning should be the first priority for a webmaster that plans to build a local image cache for offline manipulation. External storage has become relatively inexpensive and it is a good idea to purchase a storage device or even online storage when planning to build an image library. Also, it is good to plan a file and folder structure according to a commonly known standard. This can be accomplished by naming folders according to date, subject, topic or even season, etc. Many image editing applications provide a image name prefix to be added to each image as it is saved or processed. It is much easier to plan this ahead of time rather than depending on software to help organize later. The time saved in creating an efficient structure will be well valued in the long run.

If a webmaster allows their images to be copied for free, then it is very easy to copy the images to a local PC. Most websites allow the right click option to be used which will produce a menu option “save as” or “save target as” when right clicking on top of a website image. Again make certain this is allowed prior to copying images. Nothing could be worse than building a great web page or nice looking web post and then receive a DMCA take down notice. It is always better to ask first as many professional photographers will allow their images to be copied free of charge as long as they are given credit for their photography work.

Legally copying free images

Intellectual property laws have recently become a more prevalent issue since the inception of the internet. Hence the US government has heightened copyright laws and penalties for breach of copyright. If a webmaster were to receive a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take down notice from an internet service provider or other legitimate authority it is in the best interest of the webmaster to immediately comply with the request. This is especially true if the webmaster knows that they have copied the image from another website.

A common licensing structure is well known throughout the internet called creative commons licensing. This license structure is not only applicable to images but to video and written work as well. Webmasters which plan to copy free images would be well advised to first research creative commons licensing regarding which models allow copying and which allow derivative works, et cetera. This is important for hotlinked images as well as copied images.

With a little time and research, artists, webmasters, developers and graphics designers can find many sources of images for free on the internet. All image content needs can be fulfilled while complying with copyright laws, this will help to build relationships with content providers for months and years to come.

The most important feature of Screenly is that it runs on Raspberry Pi, a tiny, credit card size computer. From such a small package, Screenly delivers good performance. It can play flawless full 1080p HD video, render web content and do more.

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